As Liverpool’s first official sporting director between the years of 2016 and 2022, there was little embellishment needed for Michael Edwards’s reputation.
While famously refusing to speak on the record about his time within the recruitment department at Anfield, Edwards’s work helped Jurgen Klopp build the kind of team that won every major trophy in football between 2019 and 2022.
Players like Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho and Alisson Becker were all signed on Edwards’s watch and it was Liverpool success in the transfer market, particularly between the years of 2016 and 2018, that handed Klopp the tools to build the great side that won the Champions League and then the Premier League within 12 months of each other.
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As a result, Edwards and his famously low profile reached mythical levels among the club’s fanbase and as ‘CEO of football’ at Anfield – which was the bespoke job title given to him upon his return into the Fenway Sports Group fold earlier this year – supporters concerned about the transition away from Klopp will be reassured by his presence at Liverpool once more, due to the track record.
And while it is not Edwards who will be driving the negotiations this summer at Anfield, the appointment of Bournemouth’s Richard Hughes as sporting director was very much signed off by the CEO of football, whose long-standing desire to work with his former Portsmouth colleague will finally now be realised for the Reds.
Hughes, though, will not enjoy the same sort of trappings afforded to Edwards during his time in the role given Klopp is no longer at the helm as Liverpool manager.
Make no mistake, for all the plaudits Edwards won both publicly and privately during a period when Liverpool transformed into one of the elite sides in world football, his job will have aided considerably by transfer targets’ desire to come on board and play for Klopp.
It was something Dominik Szoboszlai made no bones about last summer, saying: “The manager called me and that was the final decision to say: ‘OK, I want to join them.’ Because of this energy, what I said before, how Klopp talks with the players, on and off the pitch, so of course I am really happy.”
Speaking about when his chance to join Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund slipped through his grasp when playing in Austria, Sadio Mane revealed in 2016: “I told myself to just carry on working hard, push myself and something big would come. I did that. I went to Southampton, I played well and then, Klopp wanted me again. Now I’m lucky enough to be working with one of the best managers in football. It was meant to happen and I am very happy to be learning all the time from him.”
“He is a special character, definitely,” Van Dijk reflected earlier this month. “He is an icon. He wanted me and me only, he felt I was a big part of the success that could happen and I could definitely contribute to that. I am glad that it all went well.The club is one of the big reasons but it was the whole package and the manager has been great.
“When I had to think about it and make the decision I had to take the whole package – the club, the manager and everything that he was planning to happen – and there were no guarantees but it was a big motivation for me to come here and I am glad I did, with the success that we had.”
As one of the most high-profile and charismatic coaches in the modern game, it was understandable why so many players wanted to work with Klopp just as much as move to a club with the stature of Liverpool.
For all the confidence that those at the AXA Training Centre have in new head coach Arne Slot, that, plainly, is something Klopp’s successor does not yet have. At the age of 45, the Dutchman’s reputation has not yet travelled too far outside of the Eredivisie, meaning transfer targets will have to be sold a different vision to the one that has stood the test of the time these past eight years or so.
For Hughes, that presents an entirely new challenge, even if Liverpool’s allure endures alongside their ability to offer Champions League football.